debate until next week, but it's very likely he will be mentioned on the stage tonight. >> i'm toure. today is the obama's 20th wedding anniversary and barack is spending it talking to some guy? >> i'm s.e. cupp, that plus mortal -- mortal political combat meets presidential politics. yeah, we are going there. >> get ready for a special edition of "the cycle" on this debate wednesday, october 3rd. it starts right now. it is debate day at the university of denver. as i said, we are just six hours away. you know, when i think of major events in denver, i always think of don meredith you can the old monday night football broadcaster who said, welcome to the city that's mile high and so am i. i'm not high the way don was but high with excitement in

anticipation for this debate tonight. we have been waiting, it seems, for months for this thing. let's set the stage before we get going. you know, sometimes i think the cliche cliches are true. this is one of them. we heard talk about how? a do-or-die for mitt romney n a lot of ways it really is. there are basically three possible outcomes, the way i see it tonight. someone that romney really does get some kind of a lift out of this it's a command performance, maybe some kind of slipup by obama. you think of john kerry in the first debate in 2004. maybe romney is able to revive his campaign tonight. the second possibility is, you know, something goes wrong for romney, he actually loses this debate. obviously that would be terrible for him now the third possibility, to be honest, probably the most likely one is nothing happens it is pace basically a draw, maybe 90 minutes of dull and boring television if that happens, the status quo in this vase affirmed. the status quo in this race has been a steady, stub burn three or four-point lead for barack obama and at that point, romney would be running out of

big-moment opportunities to turn this thing around. that's what i'm looking for. here with us now in denver, we have howard fineman, the "huffington post" media group. said he is the buffalo bob of our show. >> now i'm don meredith because don meredith always used to say on monday night football, when the game was nearly over, woe start singing. ♪ the party's over but not there yet. >> bring you back to sing at some point, heward. before we do that, we have another task and i thought howard would be the perfect guy to lead this off. basically, we want to look ahead to this debate tonight and all for a moment, assume the role of moderator, jim lehrer, pbs, a moderating this thing tonight. let just go around right now, we will start with you, howard. you got jim lehrer's seat, the two questions in front of you -- two candidates right in front of you. what is the one question that you think would you most like to see jim lehrer ask one of these candidates tonight? >> i would focus on mitt romney because this really is it for

mitt. i would go right at the central concern. i would say i would ask, governor, bain capital, which you helped to run, had many successes but it also had many failures. the bering company, the typewriter company, name a list of them. have you ever met, have you ever talked to, do you note names of or anything about the lives of any of the people from those plants that closed as a result of the investments of bain cap signal give me a name, give me a story. >> probably knows the ones the obama campaign ads have mentioned, right? >> probably knows those but those aren't the ones he wants to mention. >> probably doesn't want to bring them up. >> no, probably no. >> no amazing the degree which bain has been a problem for romney. figure this is coming up one way or another, if not from lehrer, certainly obama. i will take my turn, howard, curious what you make of this i would like to hear, i think maybe the most challenging that jim lehrer can ask mitt romney tonight is a simple one. gore nor, tell us one specific

policy area where you would be a different president than george w. bush. >> a good question and wisdom that george bush is irrelevant to this debate is wrong. the president's slogan is forward. period. meaning let's not go back to the bush era. i think that's very relevant question. interesting to hear what romney has to say. howard, my question would be for the president. i think it's fair to say he has not been pressed on this particular issue much at all during the past year if at all during his first term. i would say, mr. president to what do you attribute the record rise in poverty and the ex-spams of income inequality und youer your administration? >> a great question and if i decided to start with the president, that's the question i would have used, just that one.

i mentioned his most recent stump speech, se, he mentioned the word "poor" once in passion a record number of poor people in the united states, 46 million. accusing mir of being cold and heartless and not caring about the 47%. i have heard next to nothing.from the president who speaks endlessly about the middle class about the plight of the for a poor and an excellent question. >> i don't think he has fully addressed the comes. he said, in secretly recorded comment, he said that 47% of americans who pay no income taxes are victims and would you never convince them to take personal responsibility and take care of their lives. some are seniors, members of the military, others members of the working poor. does he really believe that those individuals see themselves as victims who do not take

personal responsibility and if not, will he apologize for his comments? >> i think that is a major drama within the drama of the debate tonight, how he handles that obviously, he is going to be asked about it. i think he needs to apologize in a way. it goes beyond inn elegant it is impossible for him to explain away the words. what he has to say, i think, is look, i was speaking as an insider to other insiders. i made the mistake of talking in cold, mechanical terms about votes and about voting blocks. of course i care everybody. i was speaking in a technical language. i should never forget that this game, this business of politics, is about real people. just imagine how kblibill clint would handle this. he would hit it out of the park, wo he would apologize and hit it out of the park at the same too.

if he does it well, it will be a key moment tonight. >> howard, one question to you on that before i get to my question for the president, when romney is talking about the 47%, that is just basic republican doll dog ma, if he apologizes or back tracks the way you are suggesting, he is going to insult the base, would he not? >> not if he does it right. what i'm saying is i was speaking at a fund-raiser, i was speaking to insiders, i was using shorthand, i was using technical cold-blooded language. that's not me. that's not who i am. obviously, the reason i want to win the presidency, die want to help everybody, i have shown that in my private life, i can show it to you. these the kind of thing he's got to do he's got his base pretty solid. as a matter of fact, if you look at the numbers in the nbc/"wall street journal" poll, republicans are somewhat more committed, enthusiastic about

voting for him. i think it is primarily because they are voting are against the president, not because they are voting for mitt romney. he has got to give those undecided four or five percent some comfort that they are not turning the country over to a cold-blooded guy who only cares about flipping corporations and balance sheets. >> my question that i'm going to put to you to the president would be that the war on drugs has been an unmitigated failure. it has cost us trillions, millions of lives, why are we continuing to fund a failed expensive war on drugs? >> i would love to hear the answer to that. at is going to be interesting. it will be interesting to hear not only if that's asked, not only what the president has to bay is it, but what those bay is t. >> one of those important issues that's not on the table. >> not on the table at all, i agree. >> talking about this on the show, yesterday analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the

candidates, it is clear there is one common trait people who have run against mitt romney in years, they don't really like the guy, there is something about his approach to toll poll aches that really gets under their skin this is a bipartisan thing. mccain in 2008 to me is the classic example. it seems to be true of obama. i wonder though is there a potential then, because we have seen that romney can carry out attacks pretty well in debates, is there a phones that romney gets under obama's skin in a way that unnerves him, off his game and forces him into some kind of unflattering moment? do you see some kind of potential there? >> i -- people who know better than i tell me the president has developed a real dislike, at a distance, from mitt romney, just like the others you mentioned in the past, because mitt romney shows politicians in some respects the worst and most manipulatives a spoesks themself these don't want to see. i think president obama has to keep his cool. kent come off as condescending. he has got to let mitt romney, in boxing terms, let mitt romney

attack and then the president has to be ready at the key moment with a droll and devastating counter punch, if he's got one. got to maintain his cool the whole way along. i think he has shown pretty much during his presidency that he is able to do that the only time we have been able to point to where reloses his cool in a way is inadvertent, did it to hillary clinton, well you're likable enough, hillary. you have to be ready for that if you are caught glancing the wrong way, let alone saying the way al gore s. >> don't look at your watch. >> remember that. it could hurt you. it could hurt you. but he has got a much easier job, i think. the president has to defend his record in a positive way and those keep his cool. >> howard fineman, stopping by the kids' table here in denver. thanks for being part of the day.

>> if you hear me singing at the end, ♪ turn out the lights, the party's over ♪ >> we will see you soon. finish that song. up next, both sides dusting off old tapes hours before the first big debate, nothing coordinated about that, right? we will dig into the ridiculousness as "the cycle" "rolls on from denver on wednesday, october 3, 2012. [ male announcer ] wouldn't it be cool if we took the nissan altima and reimagined nearly everything in it? gave it greater horsepower and best in class 38 mpg highway... advanced headlights... and zero gravity seats? yeah, that would be cool. ♪ introducing the completely reimagined nissan altima. it's our most innovative altima ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪

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well, with the debate mere hours away, conservative media outlets, including drudge, haven't and the daily caller have been hyping a recording of the president that apparently the mainstream media has been trying to hide. they are teasing it as obama's other race speech. >> people ask me whether they thought race was the reason the response was so slow. i said, well, no, this administration was color blind notice incompetence. but -- but everyone here knows that the disaster and the poverty happened long before the hurricane hit. >> shocking. now, if that looks familiar, that's because we already saw it. it turns out the whole thing is just a rehash of a 2007 hampton university speech that was widely reported on at the time by this network and others. the only thing it actually proves is that the president is, in fact, black, and was black as

early as 2007. also yesterday, the "huffington post" released a tape of paul ryan speaking at an american spectator gala back in november, which tinges of a certain tape from his running mate. >> before too long, we could become a society we were never, ever intended to be. we can become a society where the net majority of americans are takers, not makers. 70% of americans want the american dream. they believe the american idea. only 30% want the welfare state. >> 30%. 47%. get it? the democrats are using this video to further the argument that the gop ticket has disdain for a large chunk of the country so our question to the table here today is do either of these video vault tapes mean anything going into tonight's debate? and i think the answer is no, but i do want to start by talking a little bit about this drudge tape. i mean it could not have been more hyped. i head the headline, fox news tonight, obama's other race

speech. they also had in there the accent earthquake the anger, the accusations. they were flogging this thing from 3 p.m. on until it was finally released at 9 p.m. major flop. and let's remember, that this is not the first time that conservative media outlets have overhyped a video that turned out ton no big deal and totally flopped. we had the huggate incident, where the president shockingly hugged a professor at his law school at the time that he was there. we had him saying the apparently horrific dirty word, redistribution and we also have now, interestingly, 1 million copies of this anti-obama conspiracy theory documentary, "dreams from obama's real father" that have been sent out around ohio. and i think, frankly, that there is a significant chunk of the right-wing that is living in an alternate universe in which if the truth about the president really got out and if the mainstream media would just focus on the questions around

his place of birth and his secret ideology, there's no way he could be reelected president. you know, i think this actual alternate universe has been challenge for the romney campaign to navigate and impacted their ability to message effectively and focus on snag is going to be appealing to the base but makes sense to a broader elector rat. i would point to their "you didn't build that" narrative. they grabbed part of the president's comments, used it in stumps speeches, used it in ads, it was the theme for the rnc. latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, you see actually when people are read the entirety of the comments, more people find it positive than negative. so, it's not an effective message. on the contrary, if you look at the paul ryan tape which, again, i don't think is going to have a big impact on this election but it does have echoes of romney's comes about the 47% which have in fact, been devastating to the romney campaign, many more voters, 45%, have a negative view of those comments than the

23% who take a positive view of it. so i think this conservative alternate universe has been a damaging thing for the romney campaign. >> one of the things we see in the alternate universe, even to this day lots of them still think that obama is muslim, one of the things we see in this tape is a man talking about his relationship with christ in a very clear, direct and passionate way. so that should destroy that name. we also see a man giving a rather mild critique of the government's horrific response to katrina, which many other people have given. we also see an attempt to use reverend wright to attack the president, which has failed before, but because it's failed before doesn't mean we shouldn't try it once again. stepping back, we see hannity and tucker carlson critiquing the president's accent and his tone of voice. so we have two white men who don't know the president talking about how he should speak, how a black person should speak in public, especially when they are

talking to other black people, which is a really disgusting part of this whole thing and tleepsd this whole attempt to try to portray him, once again, as a scary black man who is really out for black people. he is ultimately malcolm x, that is who he is, we see him behind closed doors, which is entirely untrue. the country doesn't believe that at all. joan walsh picked up on this part of it today earlier in her piece of salon. this is the most rancid racial fear mongering i've seen in a long time. that's all this really is. >> i was gonna let toure keep going there, we were talking about salon, my policy is never interrupt any conversation about salon. i hear two points here. one quick one i want to make, i think this whole episode is worth highlighting, not for the comment conn tent, but i hope in a way this is a moment we can all agree to marginalize matt drum. we have given him an outsized role in setting the agenda for news coverage, starts sending out this noise yesterday, big

scoop coming, big video, explosive a lot of people by this point have learned these things usually don't add up to much but sometime a certain amount of anticipation and look, the real wit this guy is it is always slanted, always pushing a very transparent -- transparent agenda and basically never adds up to anything. i hope this episode can kind of illustrate that the idea, tour ray was discussing, krystal discussing, contempt for obama and how personal that is, it gets to the biggest success they have had ironically the last couple of years and is that the 2010 midterm elections. you look at this caricature of obama, radical, everything you are seeing here in the last couple of days this caricature of obama something they latched on to in 2008, opposing him unilaterally in everything he became president. the initial result for two years awarded with declining obama approval writing, awarding with huge windfall in the midterms.

it made conservatives think the rest of the country is coming to our side u in rating, the midterms explained by how bad the economy was and what we are seeing now, as the economy starts to improve a bit, most americans actually like obama, cheering for him this stuff really seems off note, i think, to the average american. >> owe mama is a divisive figure, constantly pitting one america against the other. in 2007, it was black america against a white government. and knew that he essentially is the government, he is taking that same kind of tactic and he is pitting poor america against wealthy america. the problem with this is that there are actually aggrieved groups, legitimate arguments to

be made that the government has neg lengtd the concerns of black america, that our economy has not sufficiently addressed poverty, but you don't put agrieved groups and pit them against one another. that is not what a truly transcendent leader does it is petty, it's small minded, divisive politics and i have to think this is the kind of small-minded world view that is going to keep obama from being considered a great leader. >> where does he do that? >> where does he do what? >> where does he pit two groups against each other? >> his entire economic philosophy and re-election effort, pitting wealthy america against poor america and in this video, if you listen to all 40 minutes, he talks about the federal government essentially not kbarg black america, which is why louisiana didn't get the same kind of attention that florida and new york city does. >> he does say it was not

racially motivated. >> you guys can spin it anyway you want this has been an incredibly divisive president. real leaders work to unify groups that have grievances with one another. they look to heal wounds. they look to mitigate and mediate. they don't look to instigate. that is always his first instinct. >> all right. well. we will continue down the road, t-minus five and a half hours to the main event as you see by our nifty countdown clock. who doesn't love a good cable news countdown clock? an up-to-the-second check of where this race stands. even kornacki says that guy knows his stuff. we've all had those moments. when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost.

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we are back at the university of denver, now five and a half hours out from tonight's big debate. so, here's where we stand before either candidate answers the first question tonight. president obama leads mitt romney by just over three points in the real clear politics polling average. so is there any indication the race is tightening? in our guest spot today, the man who crunches the numbers in his daily break down for the new republic, statsman nate cone, he joins us now. nate, thanks for being here. i guess the place is start, i have written about this we have talked about this on the show, there's been a lot of discussion about the sort of similar trajectory in how the month of september 2012 went to how the month of september 2004 went. and you had back then, president bush opened a big lead over johner can rib, they had the first debate,er can ski well, the gap closed and we are seeing something similar now with romney falling behind in september, now the opportunity maybe for him to close tonight. do you see a parallel there, a potential romney/kerry parallel? >> just about everything between

2004 and 2008 has paralleled so far. both candidates are flip-floppers from massachusetts who are fundamentally flawed that ran on their biography. the numbers parallel each other. after the republican convention are, romney took 47% of the vote. kerry, 48% of the vote. after the in-party convention, both obama and bush took a big lead e to date you not very much evidence that romney has yet assembled the number of voters that he will need to take the presidency. now, if that -- if these parallels continue, you would expect romney to make some gains over the next few days in the aftermath of the first presidential debate. the challenger does tend to make gains afterwards, largely because there are late tent supporters that switch to undecided after the in-party convention. the problem for romney, after his own convention, he only went to 47% of the vote f something similar happened this time, woe still trained he will need something better than what kerry

got last time that is, real change in the race where old obama supporters switch to romney's side some far, we don't see much evidence of that. >> well, you know, nate, you go back to april when romney wrapped up the republican nomination and the look at that real clear politics polling average, you said, he got even around the republican convention, otherwise trailing the entire way. do you think that says something about the evolution of american politics? are we so polarized now a three-point gap is the ten-point gap? >> polarization has something to do with it. in '08, mccain got in striking distance. '04, kerry led most of the summer. yes, maybe argue that obama is more polar rising than bush. i don't think most would argue there is a difference between the two the stability of you this vase unprecedented for how

close it has been. most of the races one candidate led all the way through has been blowout. the first close race where one candidate has held the lead pretty much all the way through, i think that douse suggest that this lead is maybe more durable than three points would suggest. there a has never been a candidate that has gone on to the presidency never held a lead by this point in the race and also not a candidate to trail in the popular vote at this stage and take the lead in the popular vote by election day with the exception -- since 1948 when harry truman pulled it off. i think romney is in an historically bad situation and gets worse when you consider the context of the stability of this rates. >> nate, some people are hinting at the possibility of a romney rebound. mike allen in politico today narrows that down to four current events. we have got new poll numbers in an nbc/marist/"wall street journal" poll show virginia and

florida tightening. we have got the obama tape. tonight's opportunities at the bay dee bail. finally, that bind gaffe yesterday, his comments that the middle class has been buried under the policies of the last four years. what's your sense? any stick and do you sense a romney rebound is in the offing? er. >> hint the vase tightening but wouldn't be for the reasons mentioned. i don't think very many of them occurred -- i think they are all too recent to have affected the most recent poll numbers. if romney does close that wouldn't be surprise. usually the challenger does make gains the last month, as a result of latent supporters coming back. i look for evidence romney can go places he hasn't been before, above 47% of the vote. if you look at the recent polls, hint at tightening, show him at 47 or 46% of the vote. obama at 49, 50% of the vote.

unless romney can break out of a 47%, unless obama falls below 49%, he will win as voting gets under way. >> something unusual going on in ohio? back in 2008, the president performed better nationally than did he in the state of ohio. now has flipped, outperforming in ohio, he stands on average nationally is there something different going on in ohio than the wrist of the country? >> i think there is, ohio is the story of the race right now if you look at the national democrat dmoem graphics, owe ma'am's weak as soon as white voters without a college degree. in ohio, you would think that shows up in a state more than everywhere else. every part of the campaign worked to obama's advantage in ohio. he has gone on the offensive against mitt romney time at bain capital, outsourcing tax returns. any state we would expect that criticism of corporation and relationship to globalization

would resonate it is ohio, where globalization has taken a toll. the heart of romney's argument against obama is obama hasn't helped the economy. ohio is a state it is doing better than the national of a range the auto bailout has a practical effect on people's lives, know people working in auto plant, suppliers of auto plant and the natural gas boom, a little beneath the radar has helped the unemployment rate in ohio. that is has resulted in obama dog better nationally better than nationalism people talking about the possibility romney could pull out of ohio and still win. i think that's very difficult to envision. if romney loses ohio, in particular if ohio is long gone, obama is going to win you can the votes aren't there else where to make up for the loss of those 18 electoral votes. >> nate, i want to talk about you, talk about you for a second? >> if you really want. >> you are the political blogging star of 2012.

you are the hot new guy that all the smart kids want to read and talk about and listen to. how does that feel to be the cool new guy on the block? >> you know, i don't think i'm that cool, actually. for one, i'm actually not that cool. i don't think that i'm as popular as being on tv might suggest. i have a few thousand twitter followers. news to me. pretty cool. >> no it's not. you know what i'm talking b you are the guy -- one of the reasons why kornacki wanted to have you on. nate was the new nate. >> he was on board early. like my 300th twitter follower or something. he thinks i'm much cooler than i am. >> what is your twitter handle, nate? >> @electionnate. >> hopefully get you a few more followers. >> hopefully. we will seem. >> nate cohn, your even the cycle that automatically makes you cool, that is the correct answer there thanks for stopping by. thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> join us tomorrow. we will have complete postgame analysis from this debate, reaction from washington, d.c.

to des moines, iowa. plus, what the polls are predict and didn't candidate's body language say more than they did luke russ the the and stats master, nate sill, very the other nate will join us. and issues the candidates won't even mention here tonight but they should. [ male announcer ] this is rudy.

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millions of nonviolent drug addicts, and no few kingpins, while not stopping the flow of drugs into the country one bit. >> his base pay might end up only being half of what he is actually paid as a police officer. >> with us now, filmmaker eugene juror recchi, writer and director of "the house i live in" which was a grand jury prize-winning at this year's sundance film festival, documentary opens friday you october 5th. i have seen it. it is awesome. i highly recommend t congratulations to you, sir. >> thank you very much.

thanks for having me here. >> as you point out in the film, we are looking a it the wrong if we say there are no winners in the war on drugs. there are winners the war on trucks, ju drugs. who are the winners and losers? >> my feeling is everybody loses. i traveled across this country to about 25 states, sure there are winners in the senses people their live willing from our system of mass incarceration. we look at drug addiction, afflicts many americans, as other addictions do we look at it as something we should punish rather than approach with compassion. all these people who work in prison industrial jobs, jailers who i talked to, cops i talked to, prosecutors, judges, everybody up and down the chain, i found they deeply regret the way things have gone and wish it were different, wish those of us on the outside would make it different so they could, for

example, come home and feel proud about what they do the victims respect just those who get the drug laws applied to them and end up incarcerated for incredible periods of time and families get destroy and community shattered but everybody involved as a system they didn't create. >> go back to the beginning of the war on drugs, richard nixon declared, he wanted to criminalize but also treat a lot of addicts. we have gone away from the treatment model all together. why did we lose sight of that being part of the whole model? >> easy politics to say you are tough on crime. nixon discovered that in '68 he made crime a national issue. the funny thing about nixon, he deserves credit on the ground how he dealt with adikts. he dealt with a drug problem in a way where two-thirds of his drug budget were spent on treatment, only a third on interdiction and law enforcement. he knew personally and practically from experience that treatment was the way to go yet he also knew on the campaign

trail that doesn't sell. i will protect from you the evil ers do down the block, i will protect you from this scourge in american life that got him like theed in a landslide in '72, now politics have followed suit ever since, reagan, clinton, both parties agree on one thing, saying you are not tough on crime has been political suicide. i believe it is changing but it has been till now political suicide. >> well, you were just telling us as you sat down, you got back from an incredible trip to oklahoma. tell us what you were doing there. >> i met incredible people in oklahoma. it is a state with one of the toughest prison systems in the country. those who runt department of corrections in oklahoma have been some of my greatest educators about the way that system works, they are deep thinking, caring people whose basic message here inside the prison system, what we see is the receiving end of what cheap politicians do by saying they are tough on crime. they promise taller fences, more cops on the beat, more handcuffs, et cetera, the public gets all lathered up, they get elected, they have to deliver on that where do they get the money?

they take the money directly out of the programs that people in corrections have in place to try to give people the skill they never learned. so when they get out, they don't back repeat offender, they have a still skill that might get them a job or character traits the failing you schools don't teach them. i learned on the inside that correction sees the failure of this system on the receiving end. we show the films in prisons and oklahoma, do that because oklahoma is a remarkable state that allowed us to show a quite controversial fill tonight prisoners inside oklahoma. i learned the prize earns are themselves, like the guards around them, trap in a system different. aid big burly man said i needed help, eugene, like someone in your family didn't need he. i didn't get help. i got punishment that led to more addiction. i'm in jail for life without parole for the possession of three ounces of methamphetamine, a package that big. >> so, eugene what is the solution? what's the -- what do we do?

is the ament that we legalize drugs? some drugs? all drugs? what do we do about this? >> i think legalize is a dangerous world. the only ant dealt to have a system that is more draconian and the laughingstock of the world. the antidote to that has been let's scare people by saying legalization which means like a frontier mentality, is a free-for-all, every stoner on every block. that is not the smart approach. the smart approach is careful and thoughtful decriminalization. sounds like a euphemism but done in portugal. what it means, you treat drugs effectivelysubstance, the government profits from it. they control the way we use it, grownups can take alcohol, do it responsibly, children can't. if you are a grownup and use alcohol irresponsibly, if it becomes a factor, for example, in another crime like you drive your car and hurt somebody, that's manslaughter. right? if you were using alcohol, it is

going to be called murder. we have this treatment of a controlled substance like alcohol as something that has to be responsibly consumed and specific regulations about it. and of course if another terrible thing happens we all fear, rape, robbery, murder exwhatever, it is an aggravating factor. i would say the same for drugs. >> heroin responsibly consumed for example? >> i think by a government that treat he is its people with compassion when addicted to it, as many countries have proven. >> the film is "the house i live in." thank you for pointing out we have been criminal ligz black and brown people but now that the meth trend is coming, you talk about that a lot in the film, when white people are going to prison for these drug laws, then we are going to see a change. good luck with the film. >> comes out this friday in new york, october 5th. love foam see t. >> i'm sure they will. thank you. up next -- yeah. mortal combat, political style. [ man ] ring ring... progresso

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political combat 12. elect your champion. paul romney, who will be the nominee? >> welcome to obamaville. >> fight! ♪ >> clean coal! clean coal! >> excellent.

>> flawless victory. that's just one of slate's awesome new political videos. also romney versus obama. videos of joe biden v. paul ryan. the battle royal still to come. spoofs are a fun way the digital age has changed the campaigns and also a serious impact. think about it. twitter was still relatively fledgling four years ago. tonight for the first time, instant reaction from the crowd could shape the national post-debate conversation. just as much as the opinions of journalists and pundits do. so, let's do what journalists and pundits do and talk about it. i think, you know, twitter and -- and i mentioned this yesterday in "the rant," i mean, twitter is a really fun way to watch a debate. live tweeting through it, see what other people have to say. but it's also really changed the sperngs. you know, as we tease there, you

get instant reaction to real-time events. it's completely democraticized the experience of getting news and watching politics because everyone can be a pundit and a news producer by retweeting what other people are saying. and it develops these real-time twitter means we've seen throughout the year, which i think have been really fun. my favorite came from the dnc when joe biden delivered his awesome speech that was literally painful to grammarians everywhere. he used the world literally incorrectly, and like 8,000 times. >> i hate that! >> this produced tweeter -- politico had a story. >> you put your own tweet. good job. >> i didn't. politico did. i mean, politico literally made the tweeting -- literally made

the tweeting of "literally" a story the next day. that is the power of real-time tweeting. >> are we going to be subjected to saying literally a lot for the entire rest of this segment? >> i hope so. >> literally, yes. >> i hope so. >> since s.e. picked a moment from the dnc, i have to pick a moment from the rnc, mean tweeting, talking to a chair and posted on twitter. there is mine. >> i know her. >> taken by my photographer steve kornacki. on a more serious note, one of the means that's had a real impact on this campaign is the war on women mean. we see mitt romney down by 25 points in ohio still. massive gender gap persisting. that was a conversation that really started on twitter and filtered into -- >> it's a common hash tag today, war on women. >> if you're not following the right people on twitter, you won't have the best twitter experience.

who who are you supposed to follow? who should be your twitter buddies swld @toure swld @toure, @secupp, @krystal ball1. >> anna marie cox, the fix's chris, markos, the king of snark, and luke russert, and we add the nate cohn at the bottom. you have to follow him, too. steve, what have you got? >> yeah, well, you know, my favorite twitter was probably the romney zingers. there were fun ones over the weekend. we had fun ones on the show yesterday. and i think the picture of krystal is my favorite one. i think krystal mentioned this

yesterday how twitter changed the real-time events, we have a more dramatic and serious example of it from this campaign, and that was paul ryan's acceptance speech at the republican convention, which was filled with some whoppers. but there was real-time fact-checking playing out on twitter as this was happening. you look at past elections, there might are been a stagger, a delay of a few days for a backlash to build against that speech or never a backlash at all. but because there's so much -- there's an inner connectedness between reporters, pundits, sort of activists, everybody is sort of in one place there on twitter, you know, all of the support material was provided in real time to debunk what ryan was saying. i think it affected the coverage. >> steve, give us your final predebate thoughts from denver. >> i said at the beginning of the show, cliche might be true, make or break for romney. i look at it from the perspective of his party, which has been told on a number of

occasions this year the big turn-around moment is just around the corner. and it was the first, he secures the nomination. that's when we're going to get even, pull ahead. that didn't happen. then when he picks his vice president, that's when we'll take the lead. didn't happen. give us a few months of bad employment news in the summer. didn't happen then. convention. didn't happen then. here we are, october's here, 60 million people here, chris christie sold this as a moment for romney to turn around. if he doesn't, i'm wondering if republicans will start to say a little bit, you know, let's think more about the house. let's think more about the senate and let's, you know, not so much about romney. i wonder if we're getting close to that. >> that does it for "the cycle," president obama just landed in denver for tonight's debate. martin bashir is there and he takes over next. way to do it! now we need a little bit more... a little bit more vanilla? this is great! [ male announcer ] at humana, we believe

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